Korean

This recipe comes from New York chef Deuki Hong's father and has origins in North Korea, the ancestral home of mandu. (Sharing a border with China, it is no coincidence that mandu sounds a lot like the Chinese word for steamed bread, mantou.) Unlike versions stuffed with finely chopped kimchi, Deuki grew up eating mandu with kimchi on the side. The star in this recipe is the very generous quantity of butter, which is mixed in with the pork, garlic and ginger and adds a real-deal richness to each bite. Not typically used in East Asian cooking, butter is a fully Americanized, fully awesome way to rethink the mandu.

This popular dish can be found on the menu at virtually every Korean restaurant in Manhattan. The beef is topped with various accompaniments such as a few raw garlic slices, kimchi (assorted spicy pickles), and steamed white rice, then wrapped in lettuce and eaten with your hands.

Invite the gang to make their own lettuce wraps with fall-apart tender pork, rice, and pickled radishes and carrots.

Collards really cook down a lot, so don't be fooled into buying some puny little bunch. I like my collards on the smaller, younger side of life. (The younger the collards, the shorter the cooking time.) The addition of kimchi gives the classic creamed greens an umami bite that I adore.

I love kimchi. To me, the world is a better place when we all enjoy kimchi. Fiery and fun, it gives a kick to all food.

Miso and hot pepper paste are at the root of every ssam sauce, but no two household's are the same. Tweak it to your liking.

This lightly pickled mix of vegetables and seaweed is especially good with seafood.

This fiery Korean stew is my weekend detox. It's spicy, clean, and capable of reversing any damage the previous night may have caused.

Koreans celebrate the first one hundred days of life, so for my son, Hudson's, hundredth-day party, we had a bash with lots of Korean food. The next day, with my taste buds toned and thinking of the great Korean tacos I've devoured at food trucks in Los Angeles, I created this version. The marinade for the steak is to die for. I guarantee you'll want to try it with Korean-style short ribs, pork tenderloin, and grilled chicken. A little planning and prep a day ahead is a great way to save time on hurried weeknights. This steak gets even better with an overnight marinade, so you could marinate it on Monday, and it's ready to grill on Tuesday night. If you're doing it all on the same night, use the marinating time to multitask—prep your vegetables and whip up the guacamole. You'll be surprised how quickly it comes together.

Editor's note: Use this recipe to make Chef David Chang's Bo Ssäm. Ssämjang—a spicy fermented bean paste sold in Korean markets—is a traditional accompaniment to grilled meats. Ssämjang is like the love child of two Korean sauces: a mix of denjang (Korea's funkier answer to Japanese miso) and kochujang, a spicy chile paste. Anyway, rather than just thinning out the ssämjang with oil or water as is most commonly done, we've allied ssämjang with extra kochujang and added vinegar in the mix to bring up the acidity of the sauce.

Our bo ssäm was a long time in the making before it showed up on the menu. I'd had an inkling for years it would be a good idea—bo ssäm is a supercommon dish in Korean restaurants, though the ingredients and cooking that go into it are frequently an afterthought. The oysters are usually Gulf oysters from a bucket, the kind that are really only suited to frying; the pork is belly that's been boiled into submission. Almost every time I ate it at a restaurant, I'd think about how much better it would be if all the ingredients were awesome. The first time we made one was for family meal back when we'd just started serving kimchi puree on our oysters at Noodle Bar. One of the new cooks was fucking up oysters left and right, so I made him shuck a few dozen perfectly, and then we ate them ssäm-style: wrapped up in lettuce with rice, kimchi, and some shredded pork shoulder that was otherwise destined for the ramen bowl. (The shoulder in our bo ssäm is, essentially, the same shoulder we put in the soup at Noodle Bar, except that we add more sugar in the last step to make the crust even more delicious—it's like a shoulder encrusted in pig candy.) So there, in the cramped, dark subterranean kitchen of Noodle Bar, I ate the best bo ssäm of my life. I think that experience and our take on the bo ssäm are typical of the way we approach "traditional" dishes: with one foot rooted in tradition and the other foot kicking it forward. There is a great line from Emerson that sums up my perspective perfectly: "Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books."

Editor's note: Use this recipe to make Chef David Chang's Bo Ssäm. This is the kimchi we use most often in our cooking and in our restaurants.

This glaze also makes for an addictive tray of chicken wings. Use the same weight and method as for the ribs, but reduce final cooking time by 10 minutes.

The shape of the crystals varies quite a bit from brand to brand, so measuring kosher salts by weight is the most reliable method. Not ready to invest in a scale? See the box below for volume conversions.

Fiery kimchi gets a little sweetness from gochujang pepper paste.